Small Groups Matter

Why Should I be using Small Groups? How will they help my students? How do I organize and Plan for small groups? I had all these questions and more when I first started teaching and learning that small groups are where Mastery happens, and the whole group is where you introduce and practice. Let me share my ideas, tips, and resources with you. Small groups allow you to differentiate instruction to meet the needs of small groups of people. We are already trying to close gaps and deal with the inconsistent attendance of students now. there are so many resources that can be used to do. However, there are a lot of things to take into consideration first. For instance:

1. What do I use to decide who to pull for small groups?

When I decide to form small groups I use a variety of data points. You can use  teacher observations, benchmark results, journal responses, unit assessments, district assessments, MAP tes and even previous years data if you want to start off at the  beginning of the year.  I usually grap Staar data from the previouus year. I do several types of analysis. First, I look at what Teks  the bulk of the class failed on each assessment  then I  look  to see if there was a common one across all of the assessment. This will be a whole group less   Second,  I look at the questions and determine the skills for each question and create lessons or activities that students  can do independently in stations, in partner ships or small groups.   Thirdly,  I look at students and group them in different ways. First  according to ranking; DNM, Approaching, Meets, Masters, Second based on teks, third based on question types, and lastly by lexile levels.

2. What materials will you need for small groups.?

When creating lessons for your small groups, you need to make sure to create a basket of resources: pencils, highlighters, paper, index cards, sticky notes, mini dry erase boards, markers, mentor text to model strategy or skill, a ring of question cards, books for students to practice skill or strategy you introduce or reteach, anecdotal note pages, the data you use to form that group. a prepared lesson, with prepared activities and questions that you will utilize with the groups. Materials also depend on grade level as well. When I taught elementary, I would add magnetic letters, word cards, abc charts, different blend charts mini anchor charts to give to students at the end of lessons.

3. What resources can I use to help me with number 2?

I love using Jennifer Serravallo's work: Reading strategies. It is arranged by goals, and within those goals skills and strategies are broken down by levels. So if your usinng lexiles it will be crucial to find a conversion chart. It provides question prompts, visuals and even possible trouble spots and how to deal with them. She has another text entitled Understanding Text and Readers. It will help you understand what it is students are expected to be able to do at certain reading levels. That goes to the next resource I recommend, the Bands of Text complexity, which provides you indepth information on what to teach into to move learners acrosss text bands. Use common Read Aloud text and passages to model skills and strategies to students, Pull question stems to work through with students. Show them how to process and analyze them, Teach into tier 2 vocabulary- I usually get these words from teh test questions from the state test I used to group students with. I make sure I understand what type of Small group I need. Is it a strategy group, a Read aloud group, a guided reading group, etc. Depending on the type that is the type I need to look into and study and prepare lessons around. I have even prepared quick small group lessons around reading skills. I find short passages, use questions stems to scaffold students through the passage and how to apply the skill to the passage. You can use any of Fountas and Pinell's resources for small groups, the text Reading with Meaning that helps studentss to focus on discussing and understanding what they are reading.

4. Another Small group can be Book clubs. Yes I said book clubs. You can pull groups of students and help them process and comprehend utilizing the same text. You can preselect books, create questions similar to the ones that they struggled with on assessments and teach into those and have kids to respond to them after reading independently. Having kids read and discuss books alone or with you helps learners to build their stamina and to problem solve learning difficuties with scaffolding and collaboration with group members. I recommend keeping these groups to no more than 4. The more in the group can cause a lot of difficulties and back sliding of learners. You have to teach what it is students need to be doing during these groups when they are not meeting with you, model and guide them for a couple of reading assignments before setting them loose.

5. How many people will you pull at a time?

I recommend keeping groups to 4 students. However, I have had groups with up to 6 studentss in them. I would avoid haveing a group bigger than that, because that defeats the purpose of small groups. You need the groups to be small enough to be able to tend to each students needs. Small groups allow you to focus on one kid at a time. It allows you to differentiate within the group. You can even pull 2 to 3 students for groups. It all depends on what the purpose of the small group. You can even pull partner ships as a small group and teach them how to help one another process text, write about text, and move across text bands.

6. How often will you pull each group?

Depending on which group you pull will determine how often you pull them. I recommend that students that are below level I recommend they are pulled everyday, on level at least 3 days a week and above level need to be met with at least once a week. Create a variety of schedules on paper and determine which one works for your class. You will find your self modifying and adjusting not just your schedule but your groups as well. Remember small groups should be flexible. Students should not remain in the same group for a long period of time, and most small groups if below level should be processing through a book a week or so. The goal is to make sure within a week you have seen every student in your class. It will be some weeks that you want be able to pull every group, don't beat yourself up about that. If you don't get to pull all groups, that is where you utilize conferencing to check in with those students comes into play.

7. What will the rest of the students be doing while I am pulling small groups?

The rest of the students can be reading if it is reading workshop. generating writing entries for writing workshop, engaged in math games or practice if math , science or social studies. You can create stations for students to practice skills and strategies previously taught. Those station activities can be task cards, games, bingo board options, technology options, and word work options. These stations will work for all subject area. However, as we are focused on Reading the best thing for students to be doing during small groups is independnetly reading, writing long and strong to a prompt about their reading, engage in partner work abouut their reading, completing graphic organized about the text. or you may choose to provide them with reading response questions to complete over their book. Make sure students understand the expectations and know how to perform what ever task you have them do in order for them not to interrupt your small groups.

8. Where will you hold your small groups in the classroom?

Make sure you position yourself where you are able to see the entire classroom. You want to be able to see from every angle. I usually pick a corner or the back center of the room and set up a table with a chairs around the table. It will let kids know that you will be monitoring students and that they are going to be held accountable for their actions.

9. How will I monitor student progress?

Organization and management is key. Determine how to best keep track of your small groups, the data from the work they do and the anecdotal notes you take. I recommend creating a document of some sort and record all your information on it. I always record the skill, strategy or activity that students do, how they did on it and what the next steps are. I record the text I use if it is an illustrative/picture book, and keep a copy of the passage that I used if that was the case. I have used a binder for each group, where I separate students by a dividor with pockets. I have used a 5 subject spiral that had pocket divisions between each section. I have even used just a folder. Either way you need to find what works for you. How do you want to organize your lessons, data and observations. Another part to monitoring student progress I use is these 4 guiding questions:

1. What is it I want learners to know when they leave the group?

2. How will I know they know it?

3. What will I do for those that do know it?

4. What will I do for thos that don't get it?

These questions guide my next step lesson plans. I need to create common assessments that will provide me with numeric data based on teks I addressed in thet small groups.

 OTHER RECOMMENDED RESOURCES

1.   Rethining Small-group Instruction in the Intermediate Grades:  Differentiation That Makes  a Difference  by Nancy Boyles

2.   Simply Small Groups:  Differentiating  Learning in any setting. by Debbie  Diller

3.   Making the Most of Small groups..... By Debbie Diller

4.   Climbing  the Literacy Ladder: Small Group Instruction to Support all Readers and Writers k-5

5.  Teaching in Reading Jennifer Serravallo

6.  Small Group Reading Instruction:  A differentiated teaching model for beginning and struggling readers by 

7.  Reading with Meaning  by Debbie Miller

8.  Any of Donalyn Miller's Books

Needing more tips, ideas and resource to run Reading workshop, check out my E- book series in my tpt store Educating-Readers.  Grab some and do your own self development aobut the components of Reading workshop,  How to use data in Reading workshop and te Importance of classroom Libraries when it comes to Reading workshop and soon look for the information here to be included in a Ebook on Small group Instruction>